I’m going to open by saying that I highly recommend the novel The Killer Angels by Michel Shaara. If you haven’t read it, then it covers a key event in American history. Frankly, I consider this book more important for Americans to read than anything on common reading lists.

Michael Shaara (1928-88) was an American writer and Korean War veteran (82nd Airborne). His work includes four novels (The Broken Place, The Killer Angels, The Noah Conspiracy, and For Love of the Game, the last of which was published posthumously in 1991) as well as a plethora of short stories. The novel The Killer Angels was, itself, adapted for the screenplay of the 1993 film Gettysburg which I think I’ll cover in another post later. His work covers a variety of topics including historical fiction, science fiction, and what I would speculate is more of a personal reflection of his own experience (The Broken Place)–I would have to actually read it to make sure, however.

Now that that’s out of the way…

Writing Style

I want to begin with Michael Shaara’s writing style because it is…well, it’s not what I’m used to. You may notice that I personally prefer a more formal writing style. It’s what I’ve grown accustomed to over the years, and what I personally prefer to write in. Shaara’s style which best described by example:

He rode into the dark of the woods and dismounted. He crawled upward on his belly over cool rocks out into the sunlight, and suddenly he was in the open and he could see for miles, and there was a whole vast army below him, filling the valley like a smoking river. It came out of the blue rainstorm in the east and overflowed the narrow valley road, coiling along a stream, narrowing and choking a white bridge, fading out into the yellowish dust of June but still visible further on the road beyond the blue hills, spiked with flags and guidons like a great chopped bristly snake, the snake ending headless in a blue wall of summer rain.

The spy tucked himself behind a boulder and began counting flags. Must be twenty thousand men, visible all at once. Two whole Union Corps. He could make out the familiar black hats of the Iron Brigade, troops belonging to John Reynolds’ First Corps. He looked at his watch, noted the time. They were coming very fast. The Army of the Potomac had never moved this fast. The day was murderously hot and there was no wind and the dust hung above the army like a yellow veil. He thought: there’ll be some of them die of the heat today. But they are coming faster than they ever came before.

The quote above is actually the first two paragraphs of The Killer Angels. I’m used to a more formal introduction, but the character isn’t even named until several pages later when he meets Longstreet. This is a tendency that continues, even if the character is named early in the first chapter in which they appear, they are sometimes only described later.

I’ll be honest, I initially found the writing style somewhat jarring, almost chaotic. However, once I settled into the book over the course a few pages, I found that I was enjoying it. It works especially well for the subject matter, and is definitely a welcome change.

I should note that I don’t know if this is a broader representation of Mr. Shaara’s work since this is the only one of his four works I’ve read.

Besides that, there is something oddly refreshing about Mr. Shaara’s style in The Killer Angels.

Side Notes

I want to touch on some things that are important when reading The Killer Angels. If you read it, then you’re reading something that is written about a very different time. I want touch on a few points here.

First off, you’ll see colonels and general officers marching with their soldiers, sometimes at the front of their units. This is, as I understand it, a completely foreign concept, to most modern militaries. In today’s world, pretty much anyone with the rank of colonel or above controls the battlefield from a Tactical Operations Center (TOC), usually somewhere in the rear…the green zone, sometimes from Washington, D.C. There are, of course, exceptions (and, of course, correct me if I’m wrong), but the environment of the American Civil War was completely different. Generals did not start leading from the rear until they were commanding a corps or an entire army. Even in corps-sized elements, generals were still at or very near the front, a fact that cost General Reynolds his life on July 1, 1863. This will definitely seem foreign to modern readers, but it was a fact of life during the American Civil War.

Second, The Killer Angels is based on the journals and letters of its major protagonists. It is a common misconception that everyone in the Union Army was fighting to end slavery, and everyone in the Confederate Army was fighting to preserve it. The reasons for various soldiers of all ranks to choose one side over the other were complex and varied. Gen. Lee, for example, appears to have held no slaves of his own and opposed the practice; he sided with the Confederacy, however, because he feared that siding with the Union would lead to him having to raise his hand against his own kin. Meanwhile, Col. Chamberlain was a staunch abolitionist who believed that the existence of the institution of slavery was just cause for war. Among the enlisted ranks…well, they had what the newspapers said, just like everyone else. Many Union soldiers, despite infamous public statements by President Lincoln, believed that slavery was the sole cause of the war, while others fought simply because they had been career soldiers since well before the war began and didn’t know any other life. Many Confederate soldiers believed that they were fighting for the cause of State’s Rights or that the Union, under President Lincoln, was intent on destroying or abolishing their constitutional rights–which they saw as God-given rather than a state institution. While The Killer Angels cannot possibly cover every motivation for fighting, it does an excellent job at portraying at least those of the officers whom the novel primarily follows.

Third, there is a lot in The Killer Angels that is simply military reality. We today separate lawful and unlawful orders, at least on paper. The reality is that, when in combat, soldiers follow orders. If you are ordered to attack a position, then you attack. You don’t ask questions except to clarify your orders and the commander’s intent. Your opinion doesn’t matter. You execute those orders or face court martial, and the mission takes precedence over your life and those of the soldiers under your command. Now, there was a formal mechanism by which an officer could make his objections to an order clear, and that is to agree to an order under protest. This appears clearly once in the book and the circumstances will be clear.

Summary

Note: I’m not going to bother with “spoiler alerts” in this section. Not only has Mr. Shaara’s book been out for over 50 years, but the Battle of Gettysburg is well-documented. If you’re not familiar with the battle, then the Wikipedia article on the battle is a good start.

The Killer Angels covers the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863) which used to often be considered the “turning point” of the American Civil War (1861-5). While I don’t necessarily consider it the turning point, it is definitely a turning point along with the Siege of Vicksburg (May 18 – July 4, 1863) which effectively cut the Confederate States of America in half. That’s neither here nor there. The point is that the book is covering the Battle of Gettysburg, a place where I’ve actually had battlefield walks, though I’ll admit that was some thirty years ago.

There is not a single protagonist in The Killer Angels, and every named character in the novel is simultaneously protagonist and antagonist depending on perspective and location on the battlefield. Some characters are followed only through the first day while others are followed throughout the course of the three-day battle. The four–at one point or another–primary points of view are told through the eyes of the following: (then) Colonel Joshua Chamberlain and Generals John Buford, Robert E. Lee, and James Longstreet. Minor points of view come from Gen. Lewis Armistead, a Confederate spy who goes by the name of “Harrison,” and a British “observer” by the name of Arthur Lyon Fremantle.

Unlike a lot of accounts you might read, Mr. Shaara begins his book not on the 1st of July but on the 29th of June. This allows The Killer Angels to develop a reason why the Union and Confederate armies wound up fighting around Gettysburg. By and large, this seems to be largely a matter of accident. Lee’s goal was to engage and defeat the Union Army. The Confederate army was probably on its way to Carlisle, PA, with forward elements of Ewell’s Corps already there. I’m, personally, of the opinion that the Confederate army wound up in Gettysburg in large part due to Jeb Stuart’s incompetence, but that’s neither here nor there. (And, because I hardly know everything, I could very well be wrong about that.)

With the exceptions of Little Round Top and Pickett’s Charge, Shaara focuses very little on the combat itself. For the most part, the story of the battle itself is told through a combination of exposition and dialog, the former of which works well due to being framed as the characters’ thoughts and perspectives in the aftermath. This method of writing results in little, if any, need to look anything up as it will be explained momentarily. For example, Lee orders Longstreet to attack the positions at the Union flank en echelon–namely, Devil’s Den and Little Round Top. Don’t know what that means? No need to worry. It will be explained later through Longstreet’s perspective.

Overall, the story closely follows its protagonists through the course of the last two days of marching leading up to the Battle of Gettysburg and the battle itself. It covers some of the problems faced by both parties, but focuses more on the problems of the Confederate army–which were, in my opinion, greater than that of the Union army. It covers Jeb Stuart’s absence until the evening of day two, which left the Confederate army blind for the critical first two days. It also covers how the death of General Reynolds and retreat of General Howard resulted in poor organization and confusion for the Union army, along with the decisions to withdraw to Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill. And, it does so while showing Lee’s infamous verbal order to Ewell to take Cemetery Hill, “if practicable,” which Ewell failed to do. One of the more interesting points covered is that many people in senior leadership, at least in the novel, were suffering from various health problems. In the narrative of The Killer Angels, General Lee is suffering from what appears to be heart palpitations, Colonel Chamberlain is recovering from heat stroke, and many Confederate officers have developed a dysentery-like illness.

Overall, The Killer Angels tells a good rendition of the Battle of Gettysburg from the perspectives of the characters being featured. While Michael Shaara certainly could have included more characters with additional perspective on the battle, I think he does fine leaving it where he does. The story he tells is enough. It touches on the key failures and challenges faced by both sides, along with the fact that the Union was able to hold in the face of, and even somewhat recover from, their own challenges and failures.

I should note that Mr. Shaara did not make a story that was in any way melodramatic, over-the-top, or unreasonably somber. Instead, he takes a much more difficult approach to his work: he includes personal notes, little details about the figures he’s writing about, and even includes a few humorous notes.

• Early on, Chamberlain is admonished that he should, “ride the damned horse the good Lord provided.”
• A Union cavalryman who speculates that a woman on her porch watching them must be a widow. He later finds out that her husband is an undertaker.
• At one point, Chamberlain reminisces about his wife–who, apparently, did not exactly approve of his joining the army. We also learn bits of his personal history, such as the fact that he joined the army under the auspices of “going on sabbatical” in order to get past the board at Bowdoin University.
• We find out that “Lo” Armistead and Hancock were friends before the war. Apparently, Armistead had sworn that God should strike him dead if he ever raised a hand against Hancock. During Pickett’s Charge, the two were on opposite sides. Hancock was wounded during the engagement, and Armistead was killed in action.
• We have some of the interactions between Chamberlain and his younger brother, Thomas, who sometimes calls him “Lawrence” where “sir” might be a bit more appropriate.

There are more such interactions throughout the book. Overall, The Killer Angels does an excellent job bringing across the human elements of both sides, both good and bad.

Comparison with History

The Battle of Gettysburg was a massive engagement across three days. It’s likely that entire volumes could be written about the battle without touching every point of view across every attack, defense, and counterattack. In fact, entire books have been written about it. I don’t know everything about the battle…not by a long shot. (As with just about everything, the more I learn, the less I find that I know.) A battlefield walk or two simply isn’t enough to cover that much ground.

There are, of course, some breaks between any historical novel and history. For example, the character of “Buster” Kilrain appears to be a complete fabrication. Arthur Lyon Fremantle, though a real person, seems to take a break from history as well, as he is listed among European observers while, historically, he had taken leave of absence to indulge his interest in the war, and was not in the United States in any official capacity. (Of course, the latter can be written off as not ahistorical, either, since the Confederate generals may not have been aware of the fact that he was not there in an official capacity.)

There are other details, of course, which may fit in the “we don’t really know” category and many, I will freely admit, which fall into the “I just don’t know” category. For example, it does appear that General Pickett blamed Lee for the destruction of his division at Gettysburg; however, I have no idea whether or not he actually said anything along the lines of, “General Lee, sir, I have have no division.” Nor do I know whether or not General Hood told Longstreet that they should’ve moved to the right while he was in the hospital after the second day. These are just details I don’t know about. So, I’ll try to avoid commenting too much on things like this.

Onto the battle itself, I don’t really see many breaks from history when it comes to the overall troop movements and actions depicted or mentioned in the book. A notable exception to this is that The Killer Angels does not make Chamberlain’s decision to forgive the flank during the assault on Little Round Top clear. The rest of Chamberlain’s actions, including the bayonet charge moving like a swinging door and sweeping the 15th Alabama off the hill, do appear to coincide with history. Otherwise, the novel seems to do a good job covering overall events, including Ewell’s hesitance to take Culp’s and Cemetery Hills late in the afternoon on the first day. It also does a good job portraying how Longstreet’s countermarch resulted in Union troops beating him to occupy Devil’s Den and Little Round Top.

I do want to make one final point on Pickett’s Charge that slightly breaks from history. I feel that this is a missed opportunity for Shaara to have actually covered some of the failings that led to the disaster. Namely, General Lee believed that he was sending 15,000 men to break the Union center at Cemetery Ridge. In fact, he was only sending just over 12,000. So, it does not appear that 15,000 men actually participated directly in Pickett’s Charge. Would an additional 3,000 men have changed the outcome? I don’t really know. I doubt it. I’m very much in agreement with Longstreet’s supposed position that not even 15,000 men would’ve been enough to overtake Cemetery Ridge and take Meade’s headquarters. I’ve walked that field, and I simply cannot see them getting much further than what is already known as the Confederate High Water Mark.

Conclusion

Yes, I think you should read The Killer Angels. I really do. Straight up, I consider this a more important story for Americans to read than The Illiad or The Odyssey. There, I said it, and I’ll stand by it.

I should note that this is likely to be an unusually long review for me. Most of the reviews I post will probably be quite a bit shorter. The next review will probably be Louis L’Amour’s Hondo which I didn’t know was a novelization of a film by the same title.